Flashback, August 1935: Out-of-Work Actors Look to DC for Help

Hallie Flanagan (in the image accompanying this post) undoubtedly wondered how she would balance employing thousands of out-of-work theater professionals and creating a vibrant national theater as she was sworn in as head of the Federal Theatre Project. It’s doubtful, however, that she expected that this new agency within the Works Progress Administration would become an early battleground over governmental funding for the arts, in a foreshadowing of the culture wars late in the 20th century.

The site of Ms. Flanagan’s swearing-in on August 27, 1935 must have seemed symbolic to her and all those who shared her hope of making theater a vital part of every corner of America: the University of Iowa, deep in the heartland of America, where the cornerstone was being laid for a new theater. She shared with playwright Elmer Rice, who had submitted a plan for the New Deal’s theater project, the vision of a decentralized theater, one that would be not a museum piece but taking its cue from the current times.

When it was all over four years later, Ms. Flanagan—who had taken leave from Vassar, where she had become a school legend for establishing a daring experimental theater—could look back with pride on the fact that the Federal Theatre Project had put to work approximately 10,000 theater professionals; that many of them had had their self-respect restored by being taken off the welfare rolls; and that at least 12 million people had attended performances by the numerous companies connected with the agency.

Yet this visionary woman, already at a handicap because she was, by her own admission, “totally lacking in administrative experience,” also felt frustrated about running interference between those like WPA head (and Franklin Roosevelt confidante Harry Hopkins) who wanted to provide “free, adult, uncensored theater,” and conservative critics who picked up on well-publicized examples of agitprop drama that were not necessarily representative of the agency.

This ideological clash was probably best described by John Rhys Moore, who, in a Kenyon Review article from 1968, explained how reaction set in:

“The depression created a sense of fraternity and common purpose among people who had never known such feelings, but it also sharpened distrust and hostility. New political alignments appeared with bewildering rapidity as angry saviors fell out among themselves.”

One play that particularly raised the hackles of conservatives was Marc Blitzstein’s musical The Cradle Will Rock. Its pro-labor, even frankly left-wing sentiments gave hives to timorous bureaucrats terrified of the right wing. It was a triumph for producer John Houseman and his boy-wonder director-partner, Orson Welles—just as their “voodoo Macbeth” had been—but exacted a price: one year after its premiere, Congress--with many members annoyed at the thought of funding attacks on capitalism, by this and other plays mounted by the FTP--drove a stake through the program’s heart, in an early example of "defunding the left."

Flashback, April 1935: FDR Creates WPA as Key Jobs Program

Last Wednesday marked the 75th anniversary of the creation of one of the most significant pieces of New Deal legislation, the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1935, which helped to fund the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Experimental in origin, vaulting in ambition, the WPA quickly ran into controversy, so of course it fell by the wayside, terminating after eight years in operation.

But before it ran its course, the WPA—a “boondoggle,” according to critics—put 8.5 million people to work—not just construction workers but also artists, musicians, theater professionals, and writers.

As the nation continues to cope with issues involving employment and the corrosion of the national infrastructure, it’s useful to remember a government program that decreased estrangement of the people from their government while enhancing all things physically necessary for a modern economy dependent on a transportation grid—bridges, roads, tunnels, airfields.

The WPA was one of what might be thought of as “alphabet soup” agencies that became an increasingly prominent part of the federal government under President Franklin Roosevelt—AAA, NRA, TVA, CCC, for instance. The agency’s first head, hard-driving Harry Hopkins, had already led one such agency, the Civil Works Administration, until his implacable enemy within the administration, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes—who had his own alphabet-soup agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA), contending for the same turf—convinced FDR to kill the program.

But Hopkins didn’t accept defeat easily, and worsening unemployment in the spring of 1935 gave him the leverage he needed to work on Roosevelt.

Besides Ickes, other critics labeled the program(which ultimately spent $11 billion) “make-work.” The record says otherwise, with repair and construction performed on the following structures:

* 125,000 public structures (including—thank God!—1,000 libraries)
* 124,000 bridges
* 650,000 miles of highways
* 800 airfields
* 8,000 parks

FDR also made sure a four (later five)-part arts component (called Federal Project Number One) was included in the package. The aid couldn’t have come at a better time for the nation’s arts scene, because as troubled as it is now, it was in a state near collapse as he took office.

More than two-thirds of Manhattan playhouses, for instance, were shut down in 1931. This meant that, when Hopkins presented his case for support of the arts, he found a receptive ear in Roosevelt, a theater buff.

(Please note that FDR, like fellow Presidential icons Washington and Lincoln, loved the theater. Maybe the next time we elect a President, we should investigate more closely the frequency of his or her playgoing!)

The Federal Theater Project, headed by Hallie Flanagan of Vassar College, gave rise, among other talents, to Orson Welles, whose versions of Dr. Faustus and especially Macbeth caused sensations.

In the form of the Federal Writers’ Project, the WPA made a particularly significant contribution. It produced 1,000 works, 380 of which found commercial publishers. Among the writers who became famous in later years who passed through the program were John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Conrad Aiken, Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Eudora Welty (who did double duty, since the WPA also used her skills as a photographer).

The Federal Writers’ Project represents, more than 60 years later, a particular goldmine for the study of history. Most famous were the “American Guide” series, books written on each of the (then 48) states and the District of Columbia, replete with all kinds of lore and still much loved by book collectors. Less heralded, but also important, were 2,000 interviews with former slaves who were still alive, 70 years after the destruction of the “peculiar institution.”

The WPA was not a perfect program: in some cases, there was a suspicious rise in its rolls just before elections, giving rise to concerns that its recipients were becoming overly beholden to the federal government. Moreover, controversies flared from time to time: concern popped up, for instance, in the making of the WPA's guide to New Jersey over what to say about the state's union strikes, and Ms. Flanagan was forced to listen to appear before red-baiting Congressman Martin Dies' committee over alleged Communist influence in the theater project.

Nevertheless, when it was over, Americans of all different varieties could look back on works that had enriched their lives and were often of enduring value.